Saturday, August 04, 2007

Michigan State Senate bans blog

By Libby

My friend and former co-blogger at The Detroit News blog, Christine Barry started a new group blog, Blogging For Michigan, now proudly billed as "The Blog Mike Bishop Doesn't Want You to See." It seems that Lansing's Republican Senate Majority Leader, Mr. Bishop, unitarily decided to cut off access to the blog at the Statehouse because he didn't like what they had to say about the GOP.

When initially pressed about the singling out of Blogging for Michigan, when Michigan Liberal, another group blog with hundreds of more visitors per day is still accessible, Bishop initially stated, "Michiganliberal.com doesn't matter, they don't say bad things about us."

However, since his blatant attempt at censorship received an unanticipated amount of attention he's been forced to backpedal, furiously spinning out excuses from productivity issues to political motivation, to innuendo about inside espionage. Christine makes small work of his lame dodging.

The blog itself is openly sourced from public information and the diaries are meticulously researched and well written. Needless to say, the upside is they're getting some much deserved attention themselves.

Meanwhile, the First Amendment loathing Mr. Bishop is finding out that blogs are kind of like Lay's potato chips. You can't ban just one.